ARE, Sweden (AP) – The Latest from the skiing world championships (all times local):
11:10 p.m.
Hours after winning the super-G, Mikaela Shiffrin has announced that she will not enter Friday’s Alpine combined race.
Shiffrin said on Twitter: “It has been a tough decision for me, but my team and I have finally decided that competing in AC will be too much to manage in this World Championships. This season has already been beyond my wildest dreams and it still isn’t over…”
By skipping the combined – and Sunday’s downhill, which she was never planning on competing in – Shiffrin will shift her focus to next week’s giant slalom and slalom, her specialties.
Shiffrin would have been a strong favorite to win the combined, but racing it would have required participating in at least one training run Wednesday or Thursday.
Shiffrin is attempting to conserve her energy after blaming physical and mental fatigue for her fourth-place finish in the slalom at last year’s Olympics.
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7:10 p.m.
The men’s super-G will take place on Wednesday as scheduled, despite some calls for the race to be delayed following the late arrival of some competitors to the world championships.
Many teams have been affected by canceled flights from central Europe, which has led to the staggered arrival of athletes and their equipment. The opening men’s downhill training session was canceled Tuesday.
However, organizers said the super-G – the opening men’s event at the championships – will go ahead as planned, with a start time of 12.30 p.m. local time.
Norwegian racer Kjetil Jansrud was on the start list, two weeks after breaking two bones in his hand in a fall in training in Kitzbuehel, Austria. The Olympic champion in super-G from 2014 has previously said the injury should take six weeks to heal but that he was willing to race with “some sort of handicap.”
Jansrud’s compatriot, Olympic downhill champion Aksel Lund Svindal, was also on the list and will be the 11th skier out in the next-to-last race of his career.
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3:50 p.m.
Lindsey Vonn is expecting to race in the downhill at the world championships despite crashing in the super-G.
Vonn say she has a “bit of a shiner” on her face and “got the wind knocked out of me” in the next-to-last race of her illustrious career.
But she looked ahead to the downhill on Sunday by saying “maybe I’ll pull off a miracle. Just because you have been knocked down, it doesn’t mean you can’t get back up.”
Asked how she felt after crashing into the safety net midway through her run in the super-G, Vonn said “I thought, ‘Why am I here? I’m too old for this.'”
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3:30 p.m.
Mikaela Shiffrin says Lindsey Vonn’s crash in the super-G at the world championships looked like it was “on the edge of disaster.”
Shiffrin had just finished what proved to be her winning run when she saw Vonn, coming down the course as the next competitor, straddle a gate mid-air and career into the safety net. Shiffrin looked away from the big screen as she stood in the finish area.
After Vonn skied down the hill to the finish, Shiffrin told her “that I’m sorry, but at the end of the day there’s not much you can say. She’s had an amazing, incredible, inspiring career … she paved the way in ski racing.”
Vonn is retiring after the world championships. She has one race left in Are – the downhill on Sunday.
Shiffrin said she hoped her teammate “can find a way to have the perfect goodbye.”
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1:50 p.m.
Mikaela Shiffrin overcame a major error to win the gold medal in super-G at the world championships.
It’s the first major championship medal in a speed event for Shiffrin, previously known as a technical specialist.
Shiffrin veered off course on the lower section, flailed her arms mid-air to slow down and narrowly cleared the next gate, clipping it with her side.
Still, the two-time Olympic champion finished 0.02 seconds ahead of Olympic downhill champion Sofia Goggia of Italy. Corinne Suter of Switzerland was third, 0.05 behind.
The results were not yet official because lower-ranked skiers were still coming down the course.
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1:10 p.m.
Lindsey Vonn has crashed in the super-G at the world championships, straddling a gate mid-air and ending up in the safety nets.
Vonn, however, got up and skied down the hill after being tended to by medical personnel.
Last week, the all-time leader in women’s World Cup wins announced that she will retire after racing the super-G and downhill at the worlds.
Vonn has been slowed by persistent pain in both of her knees.
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11:55 a.m.
The course for the women’s super-G at the world championships has been shortened because of strong wind.
The race, due to start at 12:30 p.m. (1130 GMT), will now be run from the reserve start.
Conditions were otherwise good, with the sun out and the skies clear, albeit freezing at minus-21 degrees C (minus-6 degrees F).
Lindsey Vonn is competing in the penultimate race of her storied career. She announced last week that she will retire after Sunday’s downhill.
Mikaela Shiffrin, another American, has won all three super-Gs she has entered this season and leads the World Cup discipline standings.
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11:40 a.m.
The skiers have finally arrived. The skis, however, are still stuck at the snowed-in Stockholm airport.
With many teams still missing equipment, organizers canceled the opening men’s downhill training session at the world championships.
The training session, which was scheduled for Tuesday, has been replaced with a free ski session on the race course.
But now that, too, is in question.
Organizers say the free ski is “to be confirmed if/when the truck with the luggage arrives.”
Canceled flights from central Europe affected many of the men’s teams, including the Italian and French squads, who had to take trains up to Are from Stockholm after sleeping overnight at the airport.
The first men’s race of the championships is the men’s super-G scheduled for Wednesday.
The Italian team has asked for the super-G to be postponed.
The women’s super-G is opening the competition on Tuesday.
